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Faq's and Misconceptions about Conversion optimization for SaaS

The Biggest Myths in SaaS Marketing. Do you believe in any of these?

SaaS Marketing The Biggest lies and myths

Quick Note: This article about the biggest false beliefs in SaaS Marketing is heavily based on the final chapter of my book. You can get another free sample here.

You might be asking yourself...Why include this chapter in a book about SaaS Landing pages?

Well… in this marketing world, specially the CRO part is filled with bad advice and a bunch of BS.

You’ll end up believing too much of it or just have the wrong expectations about certain things regarding SaaS landing pages, funnels or just SaaS Marketing in general.

This chapter will help you get rid of all of that BS so you don’t focus on things that don’t work, but instead, timeless principles that will help you every time!

Keep yourself in check about these false beliefs whenever you have to come up with a new page.

SaaS Marketing Myth #1 - Increasing Conversions

Great goal right?

Increasing conversions might seem like a great goal but honestly, it really isn’t.

Increasing conversions is not always related to increasing revenue which is the underlying goal.

Let’s say (for example) that one of your pages is converting poorly and you optimized the crap out of it...Will that increase revenue?

Not necessarily...That it’s not taking into account the other steps/pages before and after that page, this means you’ll have one of these two problems:

1 - The problem is actually from the referring page (the one that linked to the page you wanted to optimize).

2 - You might have increased the conversion on that page but you're pushing the problem to the next step of the funnel. Most likely the next step won’t convert that well (or at all) which doesn’t result in more revenue anyway.

See the problem?

Whenever I do clients projects I don’t really focus on the conversions rates that much, the most I’ll do is use them as a baseline.

Who cares if you only convert 1% of your traffic? That’s not the point!

You want to focus on customer acquisition cost not conversion rates.

What would you prefer?

Creating a system that you can spend $500 and get $1000+ or going from 1% to 2% conversion rate?

I’ll tell you mine...I’d be spending $500 all day long!

Always remember...focus on customer acquisition cost and predictable systems not on conversion rates!

More about this in step 3 of my free email course

SaaS Marketing Myth #2 - Industry standards

Industry Standard Conversion rate

This is honestly the stupidest thing ever…

How the hell does it matter if a certain company or the avg company converts at 2% (e.g.)?

They don’t have your customer LTV...

They don’t have the same customer acquisition cost...

They don’t have the same traffic...

They don’t have the same website...

They don’t sell the exact same product...

How the hell is that a valuable comparison?

It’s simply not!

Remember, only compare your conversions rates with your previous conversions rates...that’s it, it’s plenty!

SaaS Marketing Myth #3 - Small tweaks -> Magic Results!

You heard this already…

Change a color, the copy of the button and BANG! 2x the conversion rate.

That’s a fantasy, it doesn’t work.

When did stupid small efforts lead to big results?

SPOILER: Never…

That’s why this book focuses on identifying problems, objections, using the right "language", benefits and so on…

Those are the real reasons behind massive results, there’s literally no other reason. It’s human nature!

Remember, when you catch yourself wanting to do insignificant tweaks ask yourself what’s the real reason behind a conversion problem and go back to the exercises in this book.

SaaS Marketing Myth #4 - Analytics

Full article on this SaaS Marketing Myth here.

Don’t expect analytics to give you all of the data you need to understand exactly what’s going on.

They are just not capable of doing that, numbers NEVER tell the whole story…

You see, funnels are not unidirectional...People will come back to the website a bunch of times and visits a bunch of random pages in a order you didn’t predicted…

That alone will screw up all of your numbers!

Use analytics to compare your previous results or simply try to identify where or when people are leaving or coming from.

That’s 80% of what analytics is useful for…

Why? Because the reasons behind those numbers are just too complex for them to track, it can’t read people’s minds!

Don’t make all of your decisions based on that data, it can be totally biased.

Instead, focus on the real motivations behind buying decisions such as problems and benefits.

Don’t try to remove all of your guessing from your process (it’s impossible!), try to make better guesses instead!

Related article: SaaS Marketing Myth: Are your analytics Lying?

SaaS Marketing Myth #5 - Split testing

Split testing... Are you one test away from massive results?

This is fairly similar to the mindset behind doing small tweaks…

Let’s be honest, 99% of companies doing split tests don’t have the resources to do a proper test.

They don’t have enough traffic to test it properly.

The differences between the versions aren’t big enough to achieve statistical significance.

Or put simply, it’s more effective to focus on getting more traffic than increasing conversion rates by 0.1%.

Split testing achieves a point of diminishing returns way too fast and if you don’t have the requirements above I would recommend you to avoid them altogether.

It’s also very convenient that most of this advice/articles/videos come from the billion split testing tools out there...Ever noticed that?

Related article: SaaS Marketing Myth: Why tweaking and split testing a SaaS Website might be stupid

SaaS Marketing Myth #6 - The Buyer’s Journey

Most people are not ready to convert right away and you simply can’t expect that to happen.

According to the buyer’s journey:

  • 30% Aren’t interested (won’t ever convert).
  • 30% Don’t think they interested (aren’t aware of the solution to their problem).
  • 30% Not thinking about it (don’t see your product as the solution).
  • 7% Open to buying (you just need to answer a couple of objections).
  • 3% Ready to buy (you just need to deliver the right message for them to feel it’s a good decision to convert).

Converting people that are ready to buy is very easy, but what about the other 67%?

The biggest companies in the world have mastered the art of turning a person that is apparently not interested into a customer over time.

But how can you do this too?

You want to focus on alternate CTA’s. These CTA’s have a lower commitment but will still help visitors get further in their buyer’s journey.

Things like articles, lead magnets, demos, videos explainers and great for this.

But the real point here is for you to think about...What would be the steps to turning someone who’s not fully interested into someone who’s ready to buy?

Here’s your goal of the alternative CTA’s over time:

1- Make people problem aware (educated them on the problem they're having so they want to understand the solution).

2- Make the problem aware people aware of what the solution is (show them the product).

[Video] SaaS Funnel Breakdown: How to convert people from of these buying stages

SaaS Marketing Myth #7 - The Launch Mindset

SaaS Marketing Myth Product Hunt Launches
The "Magical" Product Hunt Launch

Just imagine...

You submit your product to Product Hunt and a thousands of potential customers will show up. MAGIC!

This is the mindset that a product launch will magically get all the attention needed to sell a product.

You would launch a product or do a press release and magically the right customer would come to your website and convert.

Oh...and it wouldn’t happen just during launch day, it would happen everyday until...the next launch?

I hope you understand how stupid this is... This is an excuse to forget about proper marketing!

These websites are full of curious people, not customers. Maybe early adopters but rarely they bring actual customers that don't churn 1 month later.

You see, you want to focus on acquiring customers consistently every day, not in "magical" (huge) bursts of them.

Once you have that predictable system (what I help clients to build and explained in this video) you can focus more on individual goals over time such as:

  • How can I decrease the customer acquisition cost?
  • How can I get more targeted traffic to the website?
  • How can I increase the customer lifetime value?

These are the only 3 questions the best SaaS companies in the world focus on (not launches).

Focus on consistent results overtime, that’s it.

SaaS Marketing Myth #8 - Marketing Channels

This is going to be a hard pill to swallow, if you're “sensitive” you might as well skip this.

Here it is: It’s not the channel’s fault, it’s yours!

Look...I don’t mean to insult you, I just want to help you understand that all of us discard awesome opportunities just because we believe it doesn’t work or it hasn’t worked in the past.

Through my calls with a ton of SaaS founders I’ve noticed a ton of false beliefs about channels (followed by the true reason):

“Facebook ads don’t work”. Tried the most generic targeting ever and wasted $$$.

“Google Adwords doesn’t work”. Went for the most generic and expensive keywords, sent the traffic to a shitty landing page and it didn’t work.

“Conversion optimization doesn’t work”. Changed the color of a button and didn’t get rich...

“Content marketing doesn’t work”. Hired an agency to write unrelated content, got almost no views and still expects conversions.

“Demos don’t work”. Didn’t have a script, completely winged it and expects to get a sale on every call.

… a million other excuses people come up with.

Look, this was obviously a bit of an exaggeration but I’ve seen people believing this and acting accordingly.

Next time some channel doesn’t work, don’t assume it’s the channel’s fault and move onto the next shiny object…

Simply assume you didn’t know how to get it to work and learn from someone who has done it in the past.

SaaS Marketing Myth #9 - The “hypocrite”

Well, I think this one will be a hard pill to swallow too…Ups!

Anyway...this is about a mindset that is super destructive and something I realised through my own experience...

I was always very frugal, I RARELY spend money that is not on my own self education but still, this was holding me back (a lot!).

I was always aware of this issue, but when I was starting my business it’s obvious that investing is hard since you have little money to spend...

You see, I always waited to get more money from a project before I would re-invest in myself and that was the very thing that was holding me back and slowing down my progress.

I know I’m rambling a bit so here’s the takeaway:

You can’t sell, if you don’t buy!

I didn’t come up with this...some of the most successful marketers and sales man have explained this a million times and that’s how I was first exposed to this idea.

If you don’t buy you can’t see how other people are doing it, you can't see how they overcame your own objections, you can’t learn the strategies that you’ve never went through!

So try to at least consider buying more helpful stuff or becoming a customer to other SaaS companies, that’s an incredible way for you to see what actually works.

Want to learn my entire step-by-step process?

the SaaS Landing page Blueprint
Get the full book or the free sample here.

In this book I laid out my entire step-by-step process that I used with my clients to help them turn more of their visitors into customers as predictably as possible.

This book includes:

  • How to identify why your page is not converting
  • How to come up with a message that will convert your visitors
  • My formula for conversion-driven SaaS Landing pages.
  • Step-by-step exercises that if you do them you'll get the content for an entire page.
  • (and more, see the check the full content here)

"Pedro revealed the secrets of $10,000+ redesign in a single book" - Pablo Olóndriz (Cofounder of miEthereum and Snail Arts)

Get the book here (or a free sample)
   

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